April 17, 2007

The Washington Post has announced that the latest trend for the young and hip is to go to hear lectures on their dates: "It's a chance to impress a mate, or a potential date, by flexing a body part that has lost ground in recent years to biceps and pecs -- the brain." Or as one hipster was quoted as saying, "Maybe we'll agree, maybe we won't. But at least we're getting inside each other's heads."

Frankly, I'm not buying any of that. If you're a hipster chick, don't buy it, either. He's not trying to get into your head; it's your pants he wants to get into.

But if, as the Post insists, "gray matter is the new black of the hip social scene," then I guess the future Mrs. Attila and I were hip before being hip was cool.

Unlike the hipsters profiled by the Post, we didn't go to vapid lectures on the latest left-wing fad. When we started dating, it was the big "nuclear freeze" summer, and there was plenty of malignant vapidity to go around. We skipped it completely.

Our first date, 25 years ago this month, was at a young musicians' competition at the 92nd Street Y. I don't remember our second and third dates, but our fourth was a "summer sing," where we and about 150 others sight-read Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Our fifth was a Mostly Mozart concert, which featured the mostly non-Mozart Schumann's piano quintet.

So, looking back, I guess I must have been major-league hip, not that I (or anyone else) knew it at the time.

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